An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Danny Phantom Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton Characters: Danny Fenton, Tucker Foley, Sam Manson, Jazz Fenton Additional Tags: Danny Fenton's Ghost Obsession is Space, Ghost Powers (Danny Phantom), Hurt/Comfort, Ghost Cores (Danny Phantom), Anxiety, Hypothermia, Ecto-Implosion 2023 (Danny Phantom), creating stars, Astronomy, danny gets new powers and refuses to talk to anyone and sam and tucker almost get eaten by a bog, It's Ok in the end, Inspired by Fanart, Inspired by Art Summary:
“You are being supremely, supremely weird, and that is a very high bar to exceed,” Sam says without preamble, setting her lunch on the picnic table next to Danny. Her words are harsh but there’s a crinkle between her eyebrows and she’s not so much glaring as apparently trying to physically extract what is going on with her friend by the tried and true method of staring really, really hard at him until he cracks.
The stars are calling to Danny in a very real way. Avoiding talking about it, or thinking about it, seems like the correct approach. His friends disagree. This somehow ends in a stinky car ride, the weirdest nightlight ever, and ghostly star science.
- This work is inspired by this amazing piece of art by Aster: https://www.tumblr.com/disregardcan0n/736047764693286912/ectoimplosion-posting-week YOU WILL LOOK AT THIS ART <3 - Danny is tapping his fingers again. Sam’s eyes are drawn to the sound. It’s a staccato tick, and she flicks her eyes from her own textbook, to his hands, up to his eyes. He’s looking out the window, or at least his head is turned away from the front of the room. His shoulders are high. The tapping pauses for a moment, then picks up again even faster.
Sam makes a cursory glance at the teacher to make sure she’s clear, then turns fully around to face Tucker. It’s easy to disguise the rotation as a stretch to crack her spine, and it does actually feel good to loosen up, though she is aiming to catch her friend’s attention. He looks back and she feels a shot of connection and shared frustration as his eyes mirror her own confusion. His lips thin and he gives a little nod, but then his eyes dart past Sam.
“Ms. Manson,” Mrs. Andelu asks sharply, “would you please direct your attention back to the lesson.”
Sam untwists her spine, tries to summon a contrite attitude, fails, and settles for grinning at the teacher. “Sorry, won’t happen again!” She chirps. Mrs. Andelu frowns but returns to lecturing.
Sam can still hear the tapping, and she grinds her pen into a corner of her notebook. She takes diligent notes for the next ten minutes, a reminder of each point of the grading rubric for the ongoing assignment, then risks looking over at Danny again. His tapping fingers have moved to his thigh, so the sound is dampened. The window, now drizzle specked and somehow looking all the more grimy for it, still holds his gaze. Sam hits her pen against the metal spiral of her notebook three times, at a rhythm fully at odds with her friend’s own finger tapping. It’s a little too loud, and one of her neighbors shoots her a glare but- Danny pauses. When he turns he’s wearing a smile that softens Sam’s eyes even as she refuses to return it. He still looks too tightly wound, upright and weirdly awake. Danny’s sneakers shuffle on the floor and he brushes hair out of his face. Sam realizes that apart from the finger tapping he’d been still as stone since class started.
The bell elicits a mundane spike of adrenaline from Sam that doesn’t even bother to surface as any visible reaction. Amongst the scrapping chairs she can hear Tucker’s distinct unfolding from his seat as he tries to simultaneously stretch, gather his notebook and reading materials, take out his phone, and reconfigure his hoodie for optimal heat regulation. She doesn’t even have to look over at him to know when he’s actually ready to leave as she hears the final zip of his backpack. Danny’s already on his feet. The three clump together and let the flow of other students guide them out into the hallway.
Tucker gets into it immediately. “Dude. This is prime nap time hour and you were extremely not napping. You’re always out on review days. What’s up with you?”
“What?” Danny asks, almost tripping as a freshman unexpectedly stops in the middle of hall, hands stuck deep in a backpack and face a mask of disbelief and fear. Someone hisses displeasure at the slow down, but the trio just slip past. November is rough on freshmen, and there’s no need to be rude about it.
“You clearly want to get out of here,” Tucker continues, nudging Danny with a shoulder.
Danny looks befuddled. He gestures around at the crowd of high schoolers who, in fact, heading for the exit. “Tucker, who doesn’t want to get out of school?” he asks. “Well, besides Jazz,” he can’t help but amend.
“You know what we mean,” Sam says. Leaning in to look more closely, she flicks a finger against his arm as they turn the corner toward the north exit. “You’re being weird. Extra weird. None of us slept much last night. I feel like garbage. Tuck almost passed up lunch to nap. Lunch! But you seem like,” she paused and looked up at the ceiling before gesturing at Danny, “caffeinated or something.”
“I’m just, uh,” Danny stalls out, then shakes himself. “Look, I’m good,” he rocks his hand back and forth in a so-so motion. “More or less.”
Tucker opens his mouth to say something but it is crowding up and the murmuring, occasionally shouting tide of students keeps pulling them toward the exit doors. Danny speeds, the cold wet air sweeping away the highschool funk of the hallway. Sam hooks her thumbs under her backpack straps and hikes the pack higher so she can speed up as well. Danny is nearly jogging by the time he’s out the door, and Tucker yells for him to slow down.
- He’s out of sight by the time the two burst into a miserable drizzle.
“Reports from community members show a noticeably slower Phantom in conflict with two aggressive wolf-like enemies,” chirps a local news reporter from the TV in the other room.
The silverware that Danny has been setting out click loudly against a plate. He holds entirely still for one moment, then goes back to setting them out. The news starts playing something that sounds distinctly like an amateur video of the ghost fight, complete with expletives from the person filming being beeped out. Near the end, there is a crashing sound followed by a howling. Car alarms start going off, and then the video’s sound cuts away.
“Witnesses describe the fight as unusual in its destruction of property,” the reporter says. “We spoke with Tom Zel, owner of a local pizza chain, whose Water Street location was impacted by the ghost fight.”
Silverware in its place, Danny walks stiffly into the kitchen, and retrieves the serving utensils and a bowl of rolls covered in a cloth.
“It really was weird,” says a man, presumably Mr. Zel. “I’ve seen ghost fights, I’ve seen Phantom fight in person and well, from what people have uploaded to the internet I guess, and this was not like that. The wolves- did you see one of them went into the store? It was thrown right into the counter. Horrible. Well Phantom was flying around, zapping them and all that, but not really good. He wasn’t talking. I mean I know they’re like big dogs but he talks a lot normally, right? And the weirdest thing was that at the start, they all came down from the sky. My manager, Al, saw it clearer but we both saw all of them come down from the sky.” He talks fast, and keeps raising his voice then dropping it back to some semblance of calm.
Another voice, this one sounding like a professional, cuts in. “Ghosts are known to fly. How was that unusual?”
Tom takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t how it normally happens. Maybe a ghost flies in from somewhere else, but well, if you’re from Amity Park you know how it is. You can almost feel it approaching, see the light get weird,” he chuckles, but it is strained. “This time it was like 0 to 60. Wham, ghost fight. I think they were really high up, and the wolves dragged him down. Like I said, Phantom didn’t say much, but he did tell them off at the beginning, he said he had been busy.” The TV crackles. It happens sometimes when the plasma in the TV screen responds to the ambient ecto energy that drifts through the Fenton household. Some other question from the reporter is obscured, but Tom’s voice slips through at the end.
“It looked like a bunch of light was all around, all over, Phantom, at the start. It was swarming around him. And he looked sad. I don’t know how else to say it. He looked sad.” Tom pauses. Danny shuts his eyes hard. Then the pizza chain owner on the TV laughs. “Well it really was just the wildest thing, and I still need to pay for a new door and window so please come on by any Zel’s Pizza location, get ten percent off if you mention this, we have locations at-”
“Thank you so much for your time Mr. Zel,” cuts in the reporter. “And next up we have a story about an area teen who is making a change in her community. You don’t want to miss it!”
Keys jangle in the lock and Maddie Fenton shoulders open the side door, toting plastic bags of take out Italian. She deposits the bags into the counter with care, then wraps an arm around her son’s shoulder to give him a kiss on the temple. He squirms out of her grasp and hurries to turn off the TV in the living room. Maddie calls for the rest of the family, and the room fills with warm chatter.
Outside, the stars are singing. He’s going to have to listen eventually. For now he sits through family dinner, trying to keep his eyes from wandering to the ceiling, the windows.
-
The wet pavement smell is a discernible miasma that folds around him as he skims down the streets. He feels fish-like, long boned and photophobic, keeping himself out of the visible spectrum, shying away from the amber glow of streetlamps, but unwilling to gain altitude. It is nice to be at street level, noticing human scale details while letting the ghostly overlay of the landscape color his perception. His core thrums as ghost wildlife travels amongst the living, little bats and mice and eyeshine in corners, the living and the dead both hard to spot and discern even for Danny. Either way, they carry their routines forward, chasing food or shadow or warmth.
Night gliding has become a habit in the last few weeks. Before, he would tend toward heights, toward the roofs and the sky. Lately, the sky has felt so close all the time. He doesn’t need to peel away another layer of human, what? Protection? Facade? When he feels shimmered through by the night sky everytime the sun fades.
Somewhere close to the river, Danny realizes he has a headache. His core stutters for a moment and his spectral tail bunches up on itself as he stops. He is upside down. He yelps, because what is actually happening and- oh.
He’d done the weird, embarrassing thing he did sometimes when he panicked while flying: he had flipped onto his back in midair, pushed his chin and chest upward, belly arched toward the sky and hands gently treading the air as if it were water. This was the swimming float he had learned so young he barely remembered the learning. His parents had taught him and Jazz the technique because if you grew up in the midwest, you probably grew up around water. The Fentons certainly had. A back float was the easiest way to stay afloat and breathing without using excess energy. He had used it with Jazz in pickerel weed lined lakes so they could chatter in the middle of the water, eyes closed against the glare of sun, and he had used it when he struck out into Lake Michigan, to check he wasn’t going too far out, flipping over and over like a seal, until the shore got too far and it got too scary and he hightailed it back to the comfort of baking sand and colorful beach towels.
It was a safe motion. A human trying to keep breathing and keep alive type of motion. With it he had also damped his aura and drew into what his friends called “super invisible.” He didn’t know other ghosts well enough to know if he was fooling himself, but it felt like he let go of the world even more than the casual shaking away of a photon's ability to bounce off him. He felt himself slip, silent, into something more absent than anything else.
Headaches in ghost form were- heck, were they just rare? Or completely unheard of? Yeah, human vasoconstriction and sleep deprivation gave him plenty of headaches under the fluorescent lights at school but like- had he hit something lately? What had happened? Normally a headache in ghost form was concerning but linked firmly to a head wound. “Got hucked into a wall by Skulker,” was an unpleasant but causal explanation for the pulsing pain. Out of nowhere? It was like glancing down and realizing you were bleeding without cause, like your wrist had twisted out of place and you hadn’t even noticed.
Caffeinated, Sam had said. And he felt- the lights, buzzing, the brightness, a weird gap of the night sky so blankly dark. And panic. The panic sits on his unrising chest for a moment.
Danny realizes he is upside-down again. He had been, right? Right. The sky was dark, and the streetlamp is so bright to look at that it hurts. That is weird too. Light shouldn’t really hurt. It never had before.
His eyes catch on the faint stars overhead- just the brightest ones with all the light pollution making it hard to peek through. The sky is the blue black haze that he secretly loves, at the edge of complete night. Astronomical twilight, when the stars come out and only the faintest things like nebulae remain hidden by the last presence of sunlight.
They may be hidden but he knows in a rush, in an almost tactile way, how far away each point of light is. Not in light-years but like a map, or a shape. It’s a depth he can wrap his mind around and it draws at it him, a grip on his core, almost a singing resonance. It’s-
He flips back over, rights himself, summons up his legs, and growls in frustration. His fingers in his hair don't even feel satisfying, his hair is so slippery as a ghost, and he can’t give it a good yank like he could as himself. As a human. This was himself too, right?
He needs to go somewhere to calm down. He mutters as much to himself with a few swear words thrown in as a bonus because hey, he really means it. He’s going to be calm, and he’s not going to look at the sky.
Danny’s boots crunch and slide on the loose slush on the roof of the Buehler's grocery store. He can hear the electric hum out of the powerlines nearby. He’s not getting near any of that. He doesn’t so much calm down as pace until he realizes that at least attempting to sleep is probably a good choice, no matter how he feels at the moment.
The ghost shield is up when he returns and there’s a delirious moment as he looks at the faint shimmer of anti-ecto energy domed over the amber glow of the FentonWorks sign (recently dimmed past 9pm after a neighborhood petition) where he considers just sleeping on the roof of the neighbor’s house. Maybe duck into their attic and bed down among old halloween decorations and old bags of clothes intended for donation.
But no. That would raise too many points of disconnect and figuring out lies sounds more exhausting than anything else. Instead he finds the familiar if scary trajectory that will carry him toward the house, allow him to transform at just the right moment to not smack into the shield, and land invisibly in his room. He drops to the floor with hardly a sound.
Sleep doesn’t really work out. And now, even now, his sleepy core feels the gentle pull of stars.
-
“You are being supremely, supremely weird, and that is a very high bar to exceed,” Sam says without preamble, setting her lunch on the picnic table next to Danny. Her words are harsh but there’s a crinkle between her eyebrows and she’s not so much glaring as apparently trying to physically extract what is going on with her friend by the tried and true method of staring really, really hard at him until he cracks. Danny’s whole body curls up slightly. He stuffs a detention slip into his backpack reflexively, like Sam hadn’t seen Lancer hand that out in class earlier today. Danny had gotten up in the middle of class and, instead of the expected dash out the door, had walked up to the window and stared fixedly out for several long moments. To the class’s eyes it had looked like he was ignoring Mr. Lancer’s calls for him to return to his seat on purpose, but Tucker had told Sam that he wasn’t sure Danny could even hear what was happening in the room.
Tucker, for his part, was opting out of this conversation by flopping onto the picnic table and pretending to sleep. Tucker had already been gently bothering Danny in between classes and over texts, trying to check in. Now he had his huge noise canceling headphones and a hoodie crammed under his head. There would be no buffer against Sam’s interrogation.
“What do you mean?” Danny asks and then cringes as Sam draws herself up and motions furiously towards his entire being.
Sam starts ticking points on her fingers. “You don’t want us patrolling with you, you seem really distracted, you barely talk to us anymore but you don’t seem mad just, well, distracted! And you don’t sleep in class anymore, which would be a good thing except it’s like you can’t sleep, can you sleep? That would be concerning? Oh and you’re weirdly drawn to windows. Is there a window ghost? Do I need to start fighting windows? I will fight windows. Oh! And the fights,” Sam does actually lower her voice at this point. Danny stares at her hands instead of her eyes. “I’ve seen the news reports and Jazz says you’re out all night, is it taking you that long to fight? I mean, none of that is good or normal but mostly you’re not talking to us and that sucks!”
Danny has been leaning slightly away from Sam as this went on, but he stops now. “Wait, what did Jazz say about me going out?”
Sam takes a huge breath, pushes it slowly out her nose, then another, and another. Oh fantastic. She’s practicing calming exercises.
“Yes,” Sam says finally, curtly. “Jazz is worried. So am I. So is Tucker. Talk to us.”
Danny cracks his knuckles. Sam waits. Tucker slowly adjusts his headphones to make sure there’s enough of a gap to overhear the conversation, while maintaining his face-in-hoodie position and refusing to open his eyes. Well, at least Danny won’t have to explain twice. But how can he explain?
“Ok fine, yes, I’ve been weird!” he whisper-shouts. There’s not many people eating lunch at the outside picnic tables, but there is still a risk of being heard. “I don’t know what it’s about though and it doesn’t seem… bad?”
“The fights look… rough,” Sam says softly.
“They’re ok,” Danny shrugs. “Seriously, I’m not hurt, or even weak but you’re right about the distraction. It’s like… ok it’s weird. I think it’s about the sky.”
Sam glances up at the sky and gives it serious consideration. Danny chuckles and Sam folds her arms but smiles a little.
“It’s, well, it’s just that I can tell a bit more about the sky and the stars and everything. You I’ve always been into astronomy, that’s not new but now I can sort of feel, or sense what’s going on up there? The stars are just always sort of… letting me know they’re there?”
Sam’s eyes are steady when Danny meets them. She looks surprised, but she unfolds her arms.
“A space sense? Is it just at night? You seem distracted all day too.”
“I can feel it a little? Like- I know that Sirius is right over there,” he points a bit below the horizon. Sam stares at the unassuming bit of pavement that his finger indicates. “It’s easy to tell because that’s one of the closer stars. And it’s pretty, well, mellow feeling?” He ducks his head as he explains and pulls back his hand.
Sam nods slowly. “Huh.”
Danny laughs, consciously relaxing his body language. “I think it’s distracting me because it’s so new, but I know I’ll get used to it. I always do.”
“You sure?” Sam worries at her black nail polish. “That’s honestly pretty… that’s a lot.”
“Oh, no,” Danny waves off. “It’s already getting better. Just more weirdness to pile on. But I’m getting used to it. Just need to stop getting distracted.”
Tucker gives a thumbs up without moving any other part of his body. Sam frowns.
-
The focus knob on the telescope turns smoothly under his gloved fingers. Jupiter shines with amazing clarity and depth through the lens. It’s such a grand planet, so alive almost. And it has been fun spending a bit of time pointing his telescope at various astronomical objects this evening. Danny had readjusted his tripod a bit ago so he could settle on the ground and now his hand brushes against something rough. It’s his backpack. Reflexively, he pulls out his phone and his breath hitches.
It’s 2:07am.
That can’t be right. He had set out to do a little stargazing. Setting the clocks back for the time change was rough, but the sun set earlier in human terms, which meant time for Danny to head over to the big field by the Amity Park observatory to set up his telescope before heading home to do late night homework. He’d caught Jazz earlier that day and explained a bit about what was happening with him and the stars and his weirdness. He wanted to stop avoiding the connection. Being part ghost was just his life, or part-life (“Danny you know I worry when you make these jokes.” “Yeah Jazz, I know.”) and maybe sensing the stars a little bit in his core every second of the day was just something to get used to. So, he’d connect back to his passion for space, see some beautiful sights through the telescope, and integrate this new experience into his bizarre, totally fine, sensory world.
Danny pants in fear. It’s cold out but his breath isn’t coming out in clouds. He’s glowing. He’s in ghost form.
This was supposed to be a human adventure. Stargaze, enjoy the fact that the cold didn’t bite so hard anymore now that his core delighted in the chill, go home and do Lit homework. When had he changed into Phantom?
He scrambles to unlock his phone, which lights up with unread messages. Two calls, one from the house and many from Jazz’s cell. Way too many texts in the group chat with Sam and Tucker. He swallows, and flips through them.
Sam and Tucker are actually pretty calm. Apparently Jazz was looking for him, but the cover story was he was at Tucker’s place for a project. There were even a peppering of questions about homework and plans for the week, which petered out around 11pm.
Jazz, meanwhile, had called eight times, first with exactly thirty minutes gaps between them, and next with exactly five minute intervals. He hadn’t heard a thing, but his phone wasn’t muted. There is a single voicemail.
“Danny,” Jazz’s voice is so tense Danny cringes. “You are working on a group project at Tucker’s. Parents seem unconcerned. I am concerned. Call me.”
Danny texts Jazz in a rush to say that he is very ok and very very sorry. Immediately he gets an incoming call from Jazz and gathers breath he doesn’t need.
“Hi,” he says, phone pressed tight against his ear. “I’m ok, I lost track of time, I’m ok, sorry.”
Jazz’s shaky breath carries across the miles.
“You didn’t… nothing happened? You just lost track of time?”
“Yes,” Danny affirms, and he hears the echo in his voice. He digs his fingers into the grass, which is wet with cold dew. He does not look up.
“You’re… there wasn’t anything more?”
“No, just wrapped up in the telescope I guess. Look, I’m going to put you on speaker now so I can get it packed away, ok?”
He taps the speaker button and lays the phone in the grass. He hadn’t even bothered to bring a blanket. Jazz’s voice crackles up from the phone. He wonders if his echo sounds louder or softer on speaker.
“But that means that- oh my god, I could have just driven over there. I should have done that. But you’re. I can hear that you’re-.”
“It’s fine!” Danny calls as he latches the last of the telescope pieces in place and zips the whole bag up. “I’ll be there in a moment, sorry.”
“Danny, I-”
Danny hangs up.
-
Jazz’s door creaks as he presses a palm against it. The glow from her desk lamp fills the room. Danny pads barefoot across the rug. He’d taken a moment to change- change into human form, change into pajamas. Jazz is sitting cross legged on her bed, blanket clutched in her fingers. She looks owlishly at him as he approaches and sits next to her.
They don’t say anything, but after a while Jazz lets out a long shudder of a breath, and wraps both arms around her brother. Danny has to lean sideways to make it a real hug. His core murmurs away, unheard by human ears, but calling out a family hum.
“I’m too tired to talk about it,” Jazz mumbles.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“We should though.”
“I know.”
-
School is normal. School is one ghost attack (Skulker, frankly easy to resolve, and since Danny isn’t holding back so it’s quick), two quizzes, an actually cool chemistry demonstration, and burrito day in the cafeteria. Danny does not look out any windows. He ignores that that doesn’t matter.
-
At midnight the stoplight down the street from Fentonworks switches from its normal red green cycle to flashing yellow and flashing red to allow the thin trickle of traffic to flow efficiently through the suburbs. Danny, who has been flopped belly down in bed in a pretzel of sheets and blankets, sees the faint shine of the color change flashing on his wall. The streetlamps feel brighter and more invasive lately. Even with the curtains shut he can see the light.
He phases out of his blanket nest and puts his head in his hands. Restless. Caffeinated. Distracted. And maybe even losing track of time. The stars are calling and his core is calling back.
He shoots a quick text to Sam and Tucker.
Danny: this is 100 to keep jazz unfreaked,im good, check the observatory if im out too late.
And then he’s in the air outside. The dark and the cool is an immediate balm. Had he felt hot? Was he just tired? He is rushing toward the bulging head of the observatory outside town which completely redirects his brain while his hands remain forward and he keeps flying. The stars sing.
Tucker is in the zone. The zone includes the correct proportion of snacks and drinks, folding himself up into his computer chair, and watching Super Smash Bros esports compilations on Youtube.
The first few notes of the ghostbuster theme blat out of his phone. He smirks a bit- his little script switches the trio’s group chat from a parent and teacher pleasing mozart jingle to the ghostbusters theme at 8pm, and back again at 7am. It was a fun thing to write, if a bit silly, and it’s nice to hear it working.
His phone alerts again, twice, and he grabs it.
Danny: this is 100 to keep jazz unfreaked,im good, check the observatory if im out too late.
Sam: ????
Sam: danny what.
Tucker jams the spacebar and pauses his video. He stares at the screen for a moment, then turns his eyes to the window. It looks cold outside. The sky is a blank gray cloud that catches light pollution and turns into a diffuse background for houses and trees to silhouette against. The moon is out there somewhere, blurry bright. No stars.
Then again, Danny had pointed out a star, in full day, that had been blocked by the planet’s bulk. Tucker unfolds and texts Sam outside the group chat.
Tucker: let’s deal with this. can you drive?
-
Sam neatly dodges the gate that blocks the entrance to the observatory, pitches the car partway into the ditch, proceeds anyway, and puts the car in park in the gravel lot. Sam and Tucker get out, bundled up against the cold. Still, they hunch against the chill, hands shoved in pockets.
The field abutting the observatory is empty. But something sparks in the woods beyond.
At first it looks like someone’s setting off fireworks. Sam keeps waiting for the pop but it never comes. Instead the lights cluster and expand, arraying out in huge clouds and sometimes gathering pinprick bright, blues and whites and yellows. It looks like watercolor paint smearing, or clouds at sunset maybe. Or like the images from the Hubble telescope, but come alive. They weave in and out of the trees, filling the open meadow.
Under the lights are somehow more lights. It takes a moment to process, but it’s a pond, iced at the edges but still water in the center. It looks cold. It catches every bit of light and mirrors it.
At the center is Phantom. His eyes blaze green, and ectoplasmic pinpricks ghost around his hair, his shoulders.
Sam puts a foot forward and realizes the meadow is more marsh than land. She sinks up to her calf in mud. Tucker’s hand catches her elbow and the wet meadow burps up under them both.
It smells immediately like muck. Sam gasps at the cold. Tucker is prepared, headlamp ready to lurch out into the water but Sam is shaking, she’s only up to her knees and she’s clenched over.
“My socks,” she chokes.
Danny is a glimmer of a starlight in the center of the pond, suspended above the tannic water. Each catch of bright light reflects and contorts on the now rippling pond water.
The lights dance above and Tucker gasps out, shivering cold, pushing into the water and mud. “They’re stars.”
Danny barely even notices them push into the boggy little meadow. He’s facing the sky, one hand extended, rotating gently, the other hand loose by his side, holding gently onto a ball of something so bright that it leaves an impression burned into their eyelids even when they glance away. And when he turns to face them, his eyes are joyful, and he is so, so still.
“Hey!” Tucker yells. He sloshes forward. A tiny galaxy pings against Danny’s fingers. His eyes glance down at the humans, and away. A nebula is spreading from Danny’s hands, coalescing into stars, a recapitulation of the night sky trapped over the vernal pond. He reaches both hands up and grins as more light sparks out from his fingers. It is so beautiful, and it is so cold. Sam is sinking, gasping at the cold, and Phantom is smiling but not at his friends. The trees seem to lean inward.
The hickory bark peeling off the trees spooks Tucker in a way ghosts don’t. There’s a glow around a lot of ghost conflict. It says: I am to be feared but the fear is the point, not the broken femur, not the trapped hand. The emotion, the conversation and response, is the goal itself.
By contrast the pond says to Sam and Tucker- nothing. The pond will continue to be with or without bodies or screams. If humans come to harm or health, it is nothing to the pond. The silt will shift but the water table has its say. It will be. The landscape is a reminder of the inevitability of decay, and the central water seems to drag them in. It did not stir, even as they struggle.
There is a very real chance that both he and Sam are slipping into hypothermia. Both he and Sam are gasping now in pain, and Tucker can’t feel his legs. His hands hover over the water, and Danny, his best friend, seems untethered from the world. Well, he and Sam have always been good at getting him back
“Hey!” Tucker shouts as loud as he can and in the effort tips forward a bit. Sam shrieks and hauls him back up. Green eyes flash toward the noise. There is a long, unquiet pause and then Danny recalls every light back to hand, where they smother like a blown out candle. Everything except Tucker’s headlamp goes dark.
“Guys?” Danny’s voice echoes in the open wood. A bit of swamp gas burps up from the muck, and Tucker lets out a hysterical laugh that chokes into a cough.
“Hey,” Sam says, teeth chattering but clear. “It’s us. Can you get us out of here? Nice text message by the way.”
Danny flies down and tries to say the word “sorry,” as often as possible. Make eye contact, and what do Sam or Tucker get? A sorry. Look away? A sorry. Try to dig a limb out of the muck for more than five seconds without help. Another sorry.
This goes on through the whole rough process of extracting themselves from the bog. It is genuinely difficult, even with adrenaline and ghost powers and handlamp. Sam at one point struggles for more than a minute, says she is giving up on shoes, and then pops out of the muck barefoot and trying to distribute her weight in such a way that she doesn’t sink. It works alright. Danny, rattled, tries for intangibility and manages to get Tucker out, clothes pretty much in place.
Everything smells. Sam and Tucker are shaking uncontrollably, and Danny scoops them up and brings them to the car. Danny manages to strip most of the water out of their clothes, which leaves behind a mostly dry silt layer. They duck in the car and Sam turns the heat up to full blast. It stinks worse.
“Ok,” Sam says through chattering teeth. “I drive. Then shower. And warm. We can do this.”
She drives away from the gravel lot, starts swinging into the ditch around the gate to exit, but Danny taps her arm, slaps a palm on the dashboard, and makes the whole car intangible.
At the mansion, Sam heads them all up to the guest wing, aided by Danny’s invisibility. They each claim a pristine shower, nearly clog it with pond grime, and emerge to don Manson branded pajamas. Sam turns up the heat for the wing using some proprietary app, and they all head for the bizarre cabin-like section of the wing with wood paneling, rustic knick-knacks, and bunk beds (“for when my cousins would visit and the adults wanted all the kids out of the way,” Sam explained). They each take a moment to simply warm up in dry, pine scented beds. Sam and Tucker nearly got hypothermia, but Danny shakes too.
“Hey,” Tucker says finally and sits up. Sam looks a little glassy eyed but her cheeks are pink. Danny turns toward the wall so Tucker can’t see him.
“Danny?”
Danny speaks in a rush. “I know I said I was sorry and I am but I am really sorry.”
“I- it’s ok?” Sam says, sounding a bit confused. “You helped us.”
“Barely noticed you,” Danny grits out.
“Well, you did eventually,” Tucker reassures. Danny is silent. The programmed warm air flows gently into the room, humming from the corner. While Sam and Tucker burrow into their comforters, Danny flings off his blankets but remains laying on the bunk bed, turned away from his friends.
They both look at each other, and then wrap their blankets around their shoulders before walking over to sit next to Danny’s curled up body. He shifts a bit to let them scoot in, but otherwise doesn’t respond. It’s a long moment before he speaks.
“Ok,” Danny whispers, “ok, it’s a bit more than distracting.”
“...Do you want to say more about that?” Sam prods.
Danny sits up and twists his hands in his lap. His friends lean in next to him. They breathe together for a moment.
“I think this is a big deal,” Danny starts, “and I think it’s staying. I really can feel the stars around the planet, just, all the time. I can feel them right now, it's almost like music? That’s not quite right it’s…” He huffs and grimaces, unable to find words.
“Look, we get that ghost stuff is weird,” Tucker fills in. “We know we can’t get it all the way but some on, this isn’t out of nowhere. You always wanted to be part of NASA, you love space, it’s not a secret. The ghost part probably makes it different.”
“Yeah,” Danny continues finally. “It’s kind of scary too. It’s amazing, I mean, I won’t deny that. Did you know the sun is noisy? I have to go pretty high up but I can hear it. And it’s amazing to get a feel for the stars- I think I’m getting signals that are past the visible spectrum for normal people. It’s so cool. But also, earth is just one planet. It’s so big out there, it’s hard to even fit it in my head. I’m used to being Phantom but this is like, what if I get lost in how big everything is?”
What if I slip away? Mutters a mean little voice in the back of his head.
“And tonight was amazing actually. I hated not seeing you all, that sucked, I really am sorry.”
“We know,” Sam and Tucker say in unison. Danny covers his eyes with his hands but smiles.
“I really got it tonight. It didn’t feel just like all this stuff outside me, it was like I could really understand the stars, where they come from, where they’re going. It was so easy.” He snaps his fingers for emphasis. A tiny burst of star cloud stretches like a spider's web between his snapped fingers. Danny’s eyes go wide and he shakes his hand violently, dismissing the little nebula.
“Wait,” Tucker reaches out like he’s trying to grab the wispy little thing back. “Can’t we see?”
Danny laughs dryly and hunches his shoulders. “Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, tapping her lip. “Why not? You weren’t scary or anything, just focused on what you were doing. And we weren’t invited to the show. Maybe now you can tell us about it.”
Danny, if anything, hunches further into himself.
“You don’t have to,” Tucker says, “But Danny, you said it yourself. This isn’t going away. And if it is a big deal, we’re part of it.”
Sam reaches an arm over Danny’s shoulders, her hand ghosting on Tucker’s neck, while Tucker leans in closer until Danny is pressed tight between his two best friends. His tensed muscles ease over long breaths.
“Ok,” Danny says, “and as a warning this is a little nerdy.”
“I am shocked, completely shocked,” Tucker intones. Sam giggles.
“So,” Danny says, snapping his fingers again. The little swirl of cosmic dust stretches fine between his fingers. Sam pulls out her phone, mashes something on her mansion’s fancy home app, and the lights dim. “This is how stars start. They’re not stars yet just, well, the start of it all. It’s called a stellar nebula. It’s not that hot, and it really is just a bunch of gas. Sometimes it stays that way but sometimes,” Danny presses his fingers together and a point of light concentrates at the center of the cloud. His eyes glow a soft green, and he glances between both his friends.
“It starts gathering, it wants to be a star,” Sam fills in. “But how?”
“It’s a collapse. All that gas, it can’t hold its loose form. Once it reaches that point, it’s going to concentrate.” The little bead of light in Danny’s fingers brightens, and the surrounding cloud weakens and contracts toward the point. It’s a warm little protostar.”
Tucker puts a finger up to the little baby star, not touching but close. It feels faintly warm.
“Next it really gets going. It starts letting go of energy and a lot of heat. It’s not quite fusion though. That’s the T-Tauri phase. After that it’s actually in main sequence. We see nuclear fusion, it’s hot, the core is releasing helium.” The little orb in his fingers shifted brighter and warm enough to be noticeable. It shines a soft blue white. “Main sequence stars can be all sorts of sizes, colors, and temperatures. There’s other types too, white dwarfs and giants and all that but this guy,” he lifts his hand, “is a little B-type main sequence star.”
They all take a moment to just marvel at the little star. It feels suspiciously like a little space heater.
“So stars have cores like ghosts?” Sam asks.
“Yeah,” Danny presses a hand to his chest, over his heart and his sleepy core. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, but they- we share that. They’re different, but still.” Tucker hums and unceremoniously waves a hand in front of the little star.
“Shouldn’t this be blinding us? You’re not supposed to look at the sun and this is a little sun.”
Danny laughs. He tilts his hand up and bounces the ghost star gently into the middle of the room. It twirls languidly, lighting the room like a nightlight.
“I mean, I think it’s made of ectoplasm, not actual hydrogen. I don’t think it would be safe to be near, not to mention look at, if it were,” Danny says.
There’s a warm silence again, this time relaxed. Yawning starts to set in. Danny’s eyes have dimmed back to blue, although the star persists. Tucker’s chin bumps his chest and he jolts up a couple times.
“I think,” Sam whispers, “that this is ok. You don’t just have the ability to do this star stuff, you actually understand it. And you stayed with us the whole time.”
“Yeah Danny,” Tucker says through a yawn, “and if it gets tough again, we’ll figure it out.” Then Tucker sweeps long arms around his two best friends and overturns them all in a hug that results in as much squawking as giggling.
After that sleep comes quickly. Danny asks if he should dismiss the little star, but Sam assures him that the only people who visit this wing are cleaning staff. The trio each pick a bunk bed and settle. The gentle hiss of the little blue star and the steady breathing of his friends mingle into a murmur that lets Danny drift to sleep, feeling grounded for the first time in weeks. He thinks he can get caught up in the sky if he has this to return to.